


Our Home

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Post Episode: This
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 17:58:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Set almost immediately following season 11, episode 2: This.  Requires viewing prior to reading :D





	Our Home

Mulder woke with a small jerk. It wasn’t the light tapping beside him that pulled him from sleep, but a twinge in his shoulder that fired off a message of pain to his brain and startled him into consciousness.  He groaned and winced as he opened his eyes.

 

Scully, cross-legged beside him on the couch, laptop on her thighs, stopped typing.  Her glasses slipped down her nose a little as she lowered her chin to look at him and put a hand to his forehead.  “You okay, Mulder?” she asked.

 

Mulder rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck from side to side before he answered.  “Getting too old for this shit,” he said.  “Nothing a few Advil probably wouldn’t cure though.”

 

“I figured.”  She leaned over and reached down to the floor, handing him a bottle of painkillers from her bent position followed by a glass of water.

 

“Ah, Scully,” he said on a sigh, grateful for her forethought.  He popped a few pills, washed them down with tepid water, and then rolled and stretched his neck and shoulders again.

 

Scully went back to typing.

 

“What’re you doing? Mulder asked.  “And why are you awake?”

 

“Couldn’t sleep.  Don’t forget, I had a nice catnap in a skanky bar in the middle of nowhere.”

 

“And another on an airless Greyhound,” he murmured, shifting his weight towards her so his arm pressed against her shoulder.  Closing his eyes, he drifted back to the night before when she’d slipped her arm through his and rested her cheek on his shoulder. She’d dozed for maybe an hour, hands tangled with his in his lap, until the brat behind them started relentlessly kicking her seat and Mulder had to calm her itching trigger finger again.

 

Eyes still closed, Mulder let the soft tapping of her typing lull him for a few minutes, but she hadn’t answered his question, and it kept him awake.  He blinked and squinted into the harsh light of her laptop.  His vision was too bleary and fuzzy without his glasses.

 

“So, what’re you doing?” he asked again.

 

“Neither of us are IKEA people,” she answered.

 

“No? But, we get to put all the shit together ourselves.”

 

“That’s not an incentive.”

 

“Where else can you order meatballs and pick up your furniture at the same time?”

 

“Meatballs give you heartburn.”

 

Mulder put his fist against his chest for a moment and rubbed his breastplate.  “So what are you looking at?”

 

“Tables.”

 

“Where?  Don’t say Williams-Sonoma.  We’re not Williams-Sonoma people either.”

 

Scully’s fingers paused, hovering above the keys.  

 

“Or Pottery Barn,” Mulder added.

 

“Wayfair.”

 

Mulder groaned.

 

“I saved a few that are really nice,” she said.

 

“Guess what, I’m pretty sure you have to put those together too.”

 

“Look.”  Scully angled the laptop towards him and he pulled his head back and squinted.

 

“Can’t see.”

 

Scully took off her glasses and slipped them onto his face.  He still squinted and wrinkled his nose at the picture on the screen.

 

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

 

“Boring.”

 

Scully huffed and pulled her glasses from his face before she turned the laptop back to face herself.  Mulder pushed himself up from the couch with a dramatic groan.  He staggered to the kitchen to put the empty glass of water in the sink and the bottle of Advil on the counter.

 

Yawning, he made his way back to the couch and closed Scully’s laptop with the quick press of his fingers.  She looked up at him and frowned and he held his hand out to her.

 

“Come on,” he said, cocking his head.

 

“Come on, what?” she asked.

 

“We should’ve gone up to bed when we got home.  Come on.”

 

Scully sighed.

 

“We’ll go to that flea market antique mall thing we found the table lamps at later today, but right now, let’s just go to bed.”

 

Scully took Mulder’s hand and let him pull her up as she shifted the computer from her lap to the couch.  “How’s your back?” she asked.

 

“Not up for anything strenuous right now, honey, but I’m glad to know you’re interested.”

 

Scully rolled her eyes and he gave her hand a squeeze as he led her to the stairs. He pulled her forward in front of him and took a step back so she could go up first.  She lingered for a few moments, touching the split rail and then inspecting the bullet hole in the wall.

 

“We’ll need to take your car,” he said, trudging up the stairs behind her.  “Can’t really strap a table to the roof of the ‘stang.”

 

“Mulder, I told you the Mustang would be impractical.”

 

“You said it was cool.”

 

“When did I say that?”

 

“1996.  We were, I don’t know, somewhere in the middle of nowhere Nevada when one zoomed by.  You said, and I quote, ‘damn, that’s a cool car.  Bet she purrs like a kitten on the open road.’”

 

Scully stopped on the second to last riser and turned around, her left brow raised high.  “Fox Mulder, did you go out and buy that car based solely on an offhand comment I made 20 years ago?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

She turned her cheek slightly and gave him a sideways look of skepticism.

 

“The guy at the dealership said the chicks would dig it.”  He wiggled his brows at her.

 

“Mmhm.”  She turned around again to head up the last few stairs.

 

“Of course I told him I already had myself a chick...girl...woman…partner in crime...” He cringed and corrected himself several times over at the look she threw at him over her shoulder.

 

“Let’s look for a new coat rack while we’re there as well.  The one we have now seems to lean slightly.”

 

“Sure.”

 

Scully yawned just then and sat down on the bed.  Her eyes drooped slightly and she struggled to toe her boots off.  Mulder knelt down and pulled them off for her.  She whispered her thanks and crawled up the bed to pull the comforter down.  When he got into bed beside her, she curled up next to him and put her arm around him, elbow bent so that her hand rested on his chest.

 

“It’s good to be home,” she murmured.

 

“Mmhm,” he agreed, covering her hand with his.

 

The End

 


End file.
